


The Ring of Necromancy

by AshVee



Series: The Necromancer's Bells [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bells, F/M, M/M, Multi, Necromancer Stiles Stilinski, Post-Book: Abhorsen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-23 16:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12511180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: Stiles Stilinski has always felt Life and Death; he just didn't know what it meant. The night of Erica's death, he feels her slip from Life and find himself chasing her back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So, as a younger woman, I read the Abhorsen series, and recently, I have started listening to the Audiobooks due to a 2 hour commute. Which lead me to think - Abhorsen was supposed to take place in our “world”, only an alternate of it. What if… You get my drift. So, we have Necromancer!Stiles and maybe even Abhorsen!Stiles down the line. I’m calling this a series right now because I sort of have fallen in love with this universe. 
> 
> For those of you who have not read The Abhorsen Series or for those who have not read it recently, an Abhorsen is a necromancer who has taken on the job of returning dead or those things from Death back from whence they came. Their main weapon is a set of seven bells as follows: 
> 
> Ranna - The smallest bell. The sleepbringer.  
> Mosrael - The Second bell. The waker. The bell is a seesaw, throwing the ringer further into Death while bringing the listener into Life.  
> Kibeth - The Walker and a bell of several sounds, contrary and difficult. It gives freedom of movement to the Dead or it can be used to walk them through the next gate to Death.  
> Dyrim - The Speaker which can give voice back to the dead or it can still a tongue.  
> Belgaer - The Thinker - a bell that can ring on its own. It restores independent thought, memory, and all patterns of life to a person. It can also erase them.  
> Saraneth - The Binder - a bell that ties the Dead to the ringer's will.  
> Astarael - The Sorrowful. This is the final bell, and it banishes all who hear it far into Death, including the ringer.

Stiles didn’t know why, but he knew. 

It had always been a vague knowledge at the back of his mind, the pure Life of those around him. He ignored it as a child, thinking that everyone just knew. They just somehow felt it deep in their bones when someone close to them or someone special to them disappeared from Life and was plunged into the cold, inky chill of Death. 

He learned differently the day his mother died. 

He knew she was leaving soon, knew deep in the place where his heart thrummed with energy that she was already in that cold place, holding on to Life with the desperate fear of those that had looked beyond. 

His father, the doctors, no one. No one knew. Not like he did. Not like he knew what Ms. Myers next door passed in the night. Not when the McCall family dog didn’t come back in after being let out to do its business. 

So, Stiles ignored the chill, the creeping sensation of death. 

He ignored it until he was sitting in his bedroom on the night of the full moon and he felt Erica go cold and chill and Death take her. 

“No,” he whispered, terror freezing the core of him as he felt that swell of cool and chill rise up to claim her. It crystallized his joints for a moment, stole his breath and left him reeling. It did another thing for him though, he knew, suddenly, where she was. 

His hands skitter over the blanket, over the nightstand, finally, finally, clasping his cell phone, dialing as he tugged on his shoes and ran through the door. 

The number you have dialed is not available. Please leave a message after the tone. 

End and redial. 

The number you have dialed is not available. 

Redial. The Jeep door slammed shut. 

The number you have—

Redial. The brakes squealed as he skittered to a California roll through a stoplight. 

The number—

“God, damn it, pick up your phone!” Stiles shouted, taking a corner too quickly, tires protesting. He mashed down on the redial button. 

“What?!” the snapped answer caught him off guard for a moment, and he took a sharp, inhaled breath to try to figure out how he was going to explain. “If you don’t—”

“Erica,” Stiles managed. “I know where she is...where she was. Meet me at the bank—”

“How could you possibly—”

“I felt her,” Stiles said, cutting off the angry, grunted words. “I felt her die, Derek, but we can do something about who did it. And Boyd might be there. I don’t want to have wasted the chance to—”

The phone beeped in his ear, and Stiles glared down at the Call Ended message that displayed. He gunned the engine harder, set on going one way or the other. 

There was an edge to him, a sharp, frozen little spire of necessity and urgency that told him that there was something to be done, something to keep the world around him sane and whole and together. 

There was no sign of life at the bank, no sign that someone had just died there except the ever present chill that he felt on the back of his neck, the itching, cloying sensation that Death was just behind him, was worse there. 

He swallowed against the rising tightness in his throat and circled the building, finding a bathroom window left ajar. No one ever said that being lanky was a positive, but climbing through the head high half window, he was glad for it. 

He found Erica laying in the back just a few yards away from a sealed vault. Her hand was outstretched toward him, her eyes vacant and sightless. She was beautiful there, even with the way her hair hung lank, her skin pale, and the ever present light in her gone. 

“Erica!” he shouted, and lunged forward. 

His knees hit the cement, but at the same time, in the same instant, they struck icewater, tugging and pulling and cloying. He drew in a gasping breath, and that same biting chill ran down his throat, stung his lungs and demanded his life. 

A shout bubbled out, and he got his legs under him enough to stand, coughing water out into a river nearly hip deep. 

“Wha...what the fuck?” he coughed out, eyes scanning the grey landscape around him. The water went on in a river in front of him, flowing easy but deceptively strong. Land stretched on either side as far as his eye could see, and in the distance, he heard the vague sound of falling water. 

“Hello!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his lips. “Hello?” 

He took a stuttered step forward, trying to fight against the current enough to get to the shore, but it grasped him and tugged him under. He was rolling in that cold, letting it carry him further and further into it, deep and cold and suddenly familiar. 

Death. His mind reeled. This was Death. 

“No!” he shouted, bubbling up and leaping from the water, hands scrabbling as he went. His hands closed around something long and heavy, slogging with the current, and for some reason, he carried them with him, fought against the grasping, claiming hands of the river that did not want to let either go. 

Finally, he managed to make the bank, clawing his way into the cold mud. He lay there, gasping, as he fought to control himself, assuage the raging fear that he was somewhere he shouldn’t be. Finally, he opened his eyes enough to take in what he’d dragged from the river. It was old, tattered material, a bandolier of rotting leather that housed seven pockets, sewn in to hold seven bells, ranging in size. 

In Life, in his normal world, he’d have quirked an eyebrow and left it by the wayside. Here, where there was nothing for miles his eye could see except the river and empty ground, it was unusual, and he draped it over his shoulder, fighting with the long ago rusted metal buckle. 

Sharp eyes flickered the length of the river back toward where he’d come from. It hadn’t been but a few moments he was beneath the spray, but it had carried him nearly as far as he could see. The faint warmth of Life in that direction pulled him more than any landmark. 

The roaring of the waterfall was close though, now, and as he turned to look in that direction, he saw her. She was wet and shivering, sitting on the edge of the river, her legs dangling in the icy flow. He called her name, but she didn’t stir, her long blonde hair a curtain between them. 

He ran forward, the distant jangle of the bells dissonant and jarring for a moment before he lay a hand over them. No matter how far he ran though, how his lungs burned, she was no closer. Finally, and with great hesitance, he slipped into the river, sure of his footing as the water flowed around his hips. 

Each step he took brought him closer until finally he stood in front of her. Her eyes were closed, head bowed as if in defeat. 

“Erica?” he whispered, her name almost lost in the rush of the water as he fell through a towering black gate and beyond. Werewolf hearing was acute, even in Death, and her head snapped up, eyes flying open. 

“Stiles?” she asked, taking him in with a fatigued smile. “What are you...Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. And he didn’t. He knew this was Death, knew that somehow, when he lunged for Erica in Life he’d apparently done the same in Death, throwing his own spirit toward hers. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, shaking her head and finally looking back down at the water as he flowed around them. 

“Neither should you.”

“I died,” she argued. “Kali killed me.” 

It took a long moment for Stiles to decide what he wanted to say, what he could say to put the fight back into her spirit that the water and the chill and the months away had stolen. 

“So, let’s get out of here and go kill her right back, Catwoman.”

The words took so long to register with her that he thought maybe he’d only thought them or maybe the roar of the waterfall had soaked them up and carried them away. Finally, as he was about to speak again, she smiled and slipped into the water. 

His hand grasped hers, cold and wet, and they waded back upstream, the current pulling harder than it had before. Together, with Erica’s strength and Stiles’s force of will, they made it back to the origin of the flow where it was calm and placid, nearly stagnant as they stepped into life. 

Stiles came back to himself kneeling on the tile floor of the bank. He was frozen, ice crystals dancing skittering patterns against his skin. He shook himself, shivering, and they melted, soaking into his clothes and dripping into the floor as the sound of rending flesh and snarling growls rent the air. 

“Stiles!” Derek shouted, and Stiles turned just in time to watch the Alpha get thrown across the bank lobby. “Get out of here.” The wolf was panting, barely standing upright, and the blood running down the side of his head reminded Stiles of what he’d just done, where he’d been, and more importantly, who he’d been with. 

Erica’s body lay in front of him, but the flesh was knit together, there was no wound that should have taken her life, and in a moment, she was gasping for air, coughing and sputtering and bolting upright. 

“Easy,” Stiles murmured, helping her to her feet and staggering forward, coming to Derek’s side. 

A female wolf, an alpha by the shine of her eyes, watched them carefully, her head cocked to the side as she considered Erica and Derek and finally Stiles. 

“Isn’t that interesting, little rabbit?” she asked, eyeing him up and down. “I killed her, and you’ve brought her back.” 

“I didn’t—”

“Necromancy isn’t as common as you might think, and the stench of it is unmistakable.” A howl rent the air, and she smiled, fangs gleaming. “I’ll be seeing you soon, rabbit.” 

She turned, took to a loping run, and disappeared into the shadow of the bank. 

As she faded, as the adrenaline and the sudden realization that they were safe sank in, Stiles was hit with a bone crushing weariness that nearly took his feet from under him. He swayed, catching himself only with Erica’s hand braced against his chest. 

“What is this?” she asked, flicking a nail against the handle of a bell. Stiles tried to make words form, tried to come up with something that made sense, but between the breath needed and the words, he was unconscious.


	2. Ranna-Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Bell is rang and realizations are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this has just been...wow, guys and gals! I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the piece so far. Here's chapter two!

Chapter Two: Ranna-Song

There was a faint humming sensation on the edge of his senses, mixing with the ringing of bells that echoed in his dreams. He sighed, turning into the warmth that accompanied that humming until the tinkering chime of bells startled him awake. 

He’d found bells. He’d found bells in a river in Death. 

He shot upright, eyes blinking against the bright morning sunshine filtering through his bedroom window. 

“Easy,” Erica’s said. Her voice startled him, and he jumped clear off the bed, spinning in a circle and bringing a hand up. It took him a long, panicked moment to realize who he was warding off before he blew out a huffing breath and sagged into the desk chair. 

“Jesus, why are you in my bed?” he asked, running shaking fingers through his hair. “Why are…” The events of the night before flickered through his mind. “Derek?” 

“Reuniting with family.” 

Stiles didn’t startle this time, but Boyd, standing in his bathroom doorway, looking tired but whole and healthy, was enough to bring him to his feet again. 

“Where have you been, man?” Stiles asked, a smile in his eyes if not on his lips. 

“He was with me, in the bank vault,” Erica answered, climbing from the bed in a graceful roll that put her between Stiles and Boyd. “We wanted to thank you.” 

“I didn’t—”

“I felt Erica die,” Boyd said, his voice that deep, quiet tone that made Stiles calm every time he heard it. “And then, I felt her live. You apparently had something to do with that.” 

“That was real,” Stiles said, eyes flickering through the room until they landed on the rotten leather bandolier and the seven bells carefully housed in the pockets sewn into it. “What the hell.” 

“We don’t know,” Erica said with a lopsided grin. “We’re just happy to be out of the vault. Derek’s just happy to have his pack back, his sister. You did that—”

“His sister?” Stiles asked, voice rising and bells forgotten. 

“There was a girl in the vault with us. Apparently, she was Derek’s younger sister and had heard of the Hale pack being back in Beacon Hills. She came to check it out but Kali got to her first.” Erica paused a moment, considering. “She called you something.” Her sharp eyes flickered to Stiles. “A necromancer, I think.” 

“I’m not a necromancer!” Stiles protested, but the silence in the air, the vague, cloying feeling of Death on the back of his neck, was startlingly loud in his mind. He’d gone into Death. He’d gone into Death after Erica, who had died, and he’d come out with her in tow. 

He shuttered a little and shook his head. 

“I don’t know how I even got there,” he amended. “I don’t think I could do it again.” 

“Hopefully, you won’t have to,” Boyd said, a smirk on his lips. “But it’s not a bad trick to know. Maybe talk to Deaton?” 

“I’m going to have to ask him about these anyway,” Stiles agreed, toying with the clasp on the smallest bell’s pouch. The rotting leather thong snapped and the pouch fell open, the little silver bell inside sliding sideways. 

The handles were all a deep, pearlescent black, though weather that was from the wood or having spent who knew how long in the river of Death, Stiles wasn’t sure. Either way, they showed no sign of wear, no age to their sheen, and if he stared at them long enough, he could almost make out shining, shimmering symbols swimming to the surface of the grain and disappearing again. 

“Stiles?” Erica asked at his shoulder, and he turned, hand falling to the smallest bell’s handle. 

“Hm?”

“Are you sure you should be… I mean, you found those there…”

“They’re bells,” Stiles said, pulling the smallest from its pouch and holding it out in front of him. There was a weight there that he hadn’t expected, a thrumming energy to it that was startling. “What harm could they…” He paused, sure he’d seen something hidden in the silver of the metal. He startled, drawing it closer for inspection, and as he did, the tiny clapper struck the side, a high, tinkering chime echoing sweet and cloying. 

Stiles felt the weight of the sound strike him, soak his bones in fatigue and he only kept from falling to the floor because of the startling sound of two bodies striking his carpet. 

“Wha…” His words came out slurred and sleepy, syrupy slick and heavy, and he stumbled forward, falling to his knees beside Erica. The tiny bell, still clasped in his hand, sounded again, and his eyes grew heavy against his will. He had just managed to slip his fingers into the bell, silencing the clapper, before his limbs sagged to the floor. 

He dozed, light and airy, on the wave of sleep too close to be wakefulness but too afraid to fall beneath the siren song. 

“What the hell?” he muttered, eyes muzzy and blinking into the carpet. Boyd snored softly to his left, Erica quiet but occasionally shifting in sleep to his right. He fought the fatigue, the bone deep weariness that seemed to seep into him from the bell’s song, and sat upright, careful of the tiny sleep-bringer still clasped in his hand. 

He finally managed to tuck the bell back into its rotten bandolier pouch and shook the effects of the chime from his mind. Eyeing the rotting leather disparagingly, he eased it gently up and into a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it tightly before tucking it into his backpack. There would be no errant ringing now. 

“Erica?” he asked, kneeling down again and shaking her shoulder. She only grunted at him and rolled away from his hands, but when he shook Boyd for good measure, he groaned and blinked up at the ceiling. 

“What happen’d?” Boyd asked speech slurred and sleepy. 

“The bell,” Stiles said, to the best of his knowledge. “It put us all down.” 

“Tired,” Boyd complained but sat up, shaking his head giving his eyes a quick rub to clear them. 

“I know,” Stiles said. “Help me get Erica to the bed, and I guess you can go back to sleep?” 

Boyd stumbled to his feet, wolf strength careful as he hoisted Erica and they both fell into the bed. The springs groaned beneath their weight, but in the next moment, the pair of them were alseep, tucked into each other so sweetly that Stiles might have taken a picture if it hadn’t been so startlingly terrifying. 

Deciding that his bed was as good a place as any to sleep off an apparently demon-bell’s chime, Stiles shouldered his backpack and headed downstairs. 

Blissfully, the rest of the house was empty. His father was already up and gone for the day. It would have taken more than a little explanation if he’d have found his dad passed out at the breakfast table or on the way up the stairs. 

Deaton’s clinic was, as the wolves often forgot, an actual animal clinic. Stiles walked through the front door, the bell chiming and sending Stiles into a flailing spastic dance before he realized it was the doorbell and not one of the Death-found bells on his back. 

He smiled apologetically at the woman sitting beside the door, pet carrier clasped firmly to her chest. Dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, and the odd lizard were caged and leashed and waiting their veterinary care, but Stiles couldn’t bring himself to give half a fuck. 

“Hello,” the receptionist said, a cheery if not tired, smile on her face. “How can I help you?” 

“Hey,” Stiles said, leaning up against the desk and trying for suave. His flannel slipped on the polished wood, and he flailed. The woman watched him with wide, amused eyes. “Hey, ahh...I called Dr. Deaton last night about my dog. He said I didn’t have to bring him in but that he might have something I could give him?” 

“Oh,” the woman said, startled. “Normally he leaves me a message if…”

“It was pretty late,” Stiles said, giving her his best smile. “Could you just let him know that Stiles is here, and he’s here for that very important medication for his dog?” 

“Sure,” the woman said, disappearing into the rear of the clinic. She returned a few minutes later, forehead creased. “He said he didn’t have anything for you. I’m so sorry, are you sure you’re at the right clinic?” 

“Pretty much the only clinic in town,” Stiles said, straightening up. He had the lightening chance to decide if he was going to push or if he was going to play innocent. The doorbell sounded behind him, and he sent up a little apology to whatever Powers that Be. 

“You know, I’m really not sure how things like this happen,” he said, frowning. “I took off the morning classes at school to get this figured out. I’m sure my father’s not going to be happy when I have to bother him at work at the sheriff's office for another ride in later.” 

“Let me see what I can do for you,” she said, gesturing him toward the back hallway. “I’ll just add you as a walk in. It shouldn’t take that long, right?” 

“Right,” Stiles lied, slipping back and into the room. As the door shut, he did a little squirming dance to get the backpack off his back and carefully slid the bandolier out, unwrapping it from the towel with shaking hands. 

Finally, it lay out on the exam table, and Stiles stood as far back from it as he could get, leaning against the sink in the corner. 

It wasn’t long until a long suffering sigh sounded from the other side of the door. Stiles stepped forward, hands scrabbling for something to do and ending up wrapped around his chest as the handle turned and Deaton stood in the doorway. 

He paused there a moment, taking in Stiles and then, finally, the bandolier on the table. He froze, eyes widening fractionally before turning back toward the hallway. 

“Evelyn, please let the front know that I’ll be dealing with an emergency for the next half an hour. I am not to be disturbed.” 

There was a faint acquiescing noise from the hall, and Deaton stepped through the door, locking it behind him. 

“Mr. Stilinski, where did you find those?” Deaton asked, carefully skirting the exam table to stand across from Stiles. 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you—”

“Death,” Deaton said, eyes sharp. “Death should be the only place for these bells to exist, and you, Mr. Stilinski, should not have them.” 

“You know what they are?” Stiles asked, anxiety warring with curiosity in his mind. “Because, dude, I can’t tell you how freaked out I am.” 

“They’re tools of a necromancer,” Deaton said, settling his clipboard down on the bed. “Except…”

“Except what?” Stiles asked as Deaton considered the dark wooden handles. 

“These look like...You found these in Death? You went into Death?”

“I don’t know how?” Stiles asked. “I just...Erica was on the ground, and I lunged at her, and the next thing I knew I was in a river?” 

“It is a river, then,” Deaton said, running a finger against the rotting leather. “This was in the water?” 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, focusing. “I was...I was being pulled along with the current, and I couldn’t breath. I just...I needed out of there. I needed something that would get me out of the water, something that would get me out of Death.” 

“You knew where you were?” 

“Yes?” Stiles wasn’t sure. “I mean...I’ve always sort of knew? I felt it on the back of my neck, I mean. Something cold and like...gripping?” 

That caught Deaton’s attention, and the man’s eyes snapped up to bore holes straight through Stiles. He took a step back from the exam table and collected his clipboard again. 

“Mr. Stilinski, no one has walked in Death in several hundred years,” Deaton said. “In fact, most don’t know of the existence of that other realm, let alone what it feels like.”

“Then why do I?”

“Because, if I’m correct, it’s in your blood.” Stiles just stared at Deaton, trying to process what he’d said, but the veterinarian wasn’t done. “Your mother, Stiles, you have her bearing?” 

“What?” 

“You look like her?”

“I mean...not really. I’m pale like she was, but otherwise—”

“Otherwise you have the look of your father,” Deaton agreed, stepping around the table to study him carefully. He even went so far as to grip Stiles’s chin in his hand and turn his face this way and that. “You don’t look like the line, but...they are the Bells.” 

“What are you talking about?” Stiles asked, flailing enough that Deaton dropped his chin. “What the hell are they?” 

“They’re the Bells of a necromancer,” Deaton said, eyeing the table carefully, “but more importantly, they’re a very special set of bells, a set that were lost when the last Abhorsen bound the realm of Death so that none could pass through. None, Mr. Stilinski, not none-except.” 

“Alright, there are like at least thirty questions that you're pointedly not answering here. What the hell is an Abhorsen? Why are they special? I'm a freaking necromancer? How do you just shut Death? Is that even possible? If so, how did I…”

“You would have to have had the blood,” Deaton said, answering the last of his question barrage. “But to have just crossed...the barrier must be weakening.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” Stiles asked, frustration evident in his tone.

“It means, Mr. Stilinski, that it will be very important for you to learn how to use your new weapons.” Deaton turned away from him and toward the door. “Come back after hours. I’ll have a few things gathered for you, and for the safety of the entire town, don’t ring the bells.” 

The door closed behind him, and Stiles stood, staring blankly at the door. He swallowed, rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and shook himself. Finally, he turned back toward the bandolier. 

“Well, that could have gone worse,” he muttered to the empty room.


	3. The Book

Chapter Three: The Book

Deaton wasn’t afraid, persay. He was appropriately concerned. 

A boy, nothing more than a boy, had shown up in his office carrying the bandolier of bells that had disappeared into nothing but folklore, nothing but the memory shared in druidic ghost stories. Warnings.

Don’t go into Death, the Abhorsen will find you. 

His father had said it with a smile, but there was the edge of truth to the stories, stories many once knew but something had driven from common memory. There had been an Abhorsen, there had been Life and Death and the River and the Gates, and then there had simply not. Everyone knew of them, everyone in the Old Kingdom his grandfather sometimes told stories about, stories that had been passed down from mouth to ear over the years that Alan had forgotten. 

Stories that would have died with him until a boy with bells. 

He clenched his fists around the book, his skin roiling at the feel of it beneath his palms. This was important, and for that reason and that reason only, he had unlocked the chest his grandfather left to him, had rummaged to where a false bottom lay, and had drawn from it the book that turned his stomach and made his skin cold and clammy. 

“There you are,” Deaton said, drawing the book out and into the dim lighting of the rear room in his clinic. It wasn’t his book, not his or his grandfather’s, but it had been entrusted to their family to watch and wait and now…

Now Deaton wanted nothing more than to return the book to the chest and to leave it there, to ignore a threat until it demanded attention. He wanted to take the Bells and bury them as deeply in history and memory as they would go and just wait. This could, afterall, be a foreshadowing reemergency of the necromantic arts. It might yet be several years, hell, maybe even lifetimes, in the future they’d be needed, when those walls keeping the dead where they belonged would fall. 

Deaton could be gone. It could be someone else’s problem. 

It could be. 

But it wasn’t. Deaton hadn’t been a lucky man, not once in his life. His father died young, leaving him without any real teacher. He’d been forced to learn on his own and glean what he could here and there. He’d stumbled into his emissary position, and just as his life was comfortable, a hunter had burned it to the ground with the Hale House because Deaton wasn’t watching, wasn’t aware. Years of guilt and recovery and trying to find the cool balance in his own soul passed. His clinic was flourishing, and then Peter Hale had healed enough to seek revenge. Now? Now there were teenage werewolves running amuck in his town. 

No, Alan Deaton was a dark cloud, if ever there was one, which mean this new threat, this cold creeping into the periphery of his other senses, would not wait for someone other. It would come, and it would come hard and fast. 

He sighed as he set the book on the exam table, the harsh light highlighting the leather cover, the way the gilding of the letters seemed to ooze sluggishly. Against the dark background, he couldn’t quite make out the substance, so he ran a finger through it, startled at the warmth. Drawing back, he rubbed it between his fingers, sniffing copper and seeing the sharp redness of fresh blood. 

“What now?” he asked the silent room, and wiped the blood off onto his dark slacks. He sat there, staring at the book, until the back door jarred open and closed. Until there was a boy standing across from him, until that boy, that boy with the Bells, reached out and took the book from Deaton’s table, from his shoulders, and left. 

Alan Deaton had never been a proud man, but he was especially ashamed of his own fear. 

#

Stiles stood across from Alan, staring expectantly at the older man as he just stood there. 

“Deaton?” Stiles asked for the second time. “You said you’d have something for me?”

Deaton wasn’t a loud man, wasn’t talkative beyond what was cordial, but he’d never outright ignored Stiles, even when the teenager probably deserved it. Stiles shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, staring at the examination table between them where a clinical light was shining down on a leather bound book so old it looked as though it might fall apart if Stiles so much as touched it. 

“Is this it?” Stiles asked, taking a step forward. He paused, hand outstretched until his fingers was just brushing against the gilding. They came away wet and warm, and the blood was stark against his pale fingertips. “The Book of the Dead,” he read the words out loud. 

A rush of something raced through his veins, hot and cold all at once, demanding and begging and so very much alive that it made Stiles shiver. His hand closed around the spine of the book and hefted it, that thrill of possibility still in his nerves, still leaping synapses and flooding him with something that felt a lot like power. 

“This is for me?” Stiles asked again, but Deaton only stared at the book in his hands. A book that felt sure and right clasped there. “This is for me,” Stiles repeated, all question gone from his voice. 

He took the book and left. Deaton didn’t call after him, didn’t try to stop him. All he said, as Stiles stood in the doorway as a soft, whisper of what he’d cautioned earlier in the day. 

“Don’t ring the bells,” Deaton said, hesitant and unsure. 

“Right,” Stiles confirmed, and left. If Deaton couldn’t bring himself to do more than whisper half-orders in the darkness of his clinic, then Stiles was going to pay him as much heed as that entitled. First, though, first he’d do what he was so very good at. 

He’d research, and he knew just where to start.

#

Stiles read the book cover to cover twice. In the small hours of the morning, the sun just starting to make the world outside a dull haze of almost shadow, he was sure something was wrong with his mind. The first time, he’d read it in an hour at a half, processing the information and taking notes here and there on particularly specific details. He’d filled five pages of a notebook front and back that first time. 

There’d been a lot of information, sure. There were things he’d want more detail about, things he had questions concerning, and he really only tipped the cover again to check a word he’d written down toward the beginning that had meant more toward the end. 

Clarification, he told himself, and nearly six hours later, he was blinking owlishly down at a completely different set of notes — ten pages front and back, and all similar but different to what he’d written the first time.

Frustrated and tired, with the sunrise threatening, he’d torn the pages out of the notebook, stapled them together in little separate booklets, and tucked them into the front cover. He’d take another look during study hall. 

Except, at study hall, he’d opened the cover and had fallen into a completely different first page than the other two times. His mind had soaked up all it offered, hand flying over another piece of notebook paper, covering two pages in the first chapter, and then the bell had shattered his study. 

Three days later, his mind reeling, he dropped into a chair across from Chris Argent in the local mom and pop diner, and laid his backpack on the table. 

“Can I help you?” Chris asked, eyes critical and sharp. 

“Maybe?” Stiles asked, half-hearted and confused. “I’ve got a set of bells I can’t ring and a book that keeps changing, and I—”

“Changing?” Chris asked, the laziness to his stare disappearing. 

“The words aren’t the same, the content isn’t the same, no matter how many times I read it, and some of it...some of it I know I read before, but I can’t remember learning it and its not written down and—”

Stiles fumbled the book and the ever growing stack of notes he’d arranged into a three ring binder when it became clear a pocket folder wasn’t going to be enough. The Book of the Dead firmly in hand, he sat it on the table in front of Chris. 

“Does this look familiar to you? Huntery stuff and all?” 

Chris only stared, pale and unblinking, down at the book before he flipped it over so the cover was hidden and flagged down his waitress. His meal paid for, he gestured Stiles after him. Stiles, ever vigilant and paranoid, went because he’d exhausted his mind, the internet, Alan Deaton, and every single library within a hundred mile radius. 

Hunters, it seemed, were at least a source of information he could try to tap before whatever the hell the Alpha Pack thought they were doing came to a head.


End file.
